22 December 2008 10:53 AM

If only Bush's missiles were as easy to duck as that pair of shoes

This is Peter Hitchens' Mail on Sunday column

Is it a crime to throw your shoes at the President of the United States? If so, is it a serious felony deserving a savage beating and a spell in jail, or a minor offence to be dealt with by a fine and a ticking-off?

I have long thought that all our leaders would benefit from more exposure to heckling, pies, eggs and tomatoes. This used to be a normal occupational risk, and it stopped them getting above themselves.

President Bush’s American audiences are, I believe, vetted. His fellow warmonger, Anthony Blair, likewise lives in a sealed bubble of expensive safety. This helped both men to become delusional power maniacs.

The universal excuse of ‘security’ nowadays protects them almost completely from healthy public contempt.

The humourless, stone-faced persons who guard them do not distinguish between a shout of ‘rubbish’, a custard tart or a grenade - as old Walter Wolfgang found out when he tried to interrupt some ghastly speech at the 2005 Labour Conference and narrowly escaped prosecution for terrorism.

A shoe may be borderline. A hobnailed boot would clearly be a serious assault. A slipper wouldn’t be. I wouldn’t much want footwear of any kind in my face. But a black lace-up isn’t really life-threatening.

We should all be much more concerned about Muntadar al-Zeidi, the Iraqi journalist who certainly cheered up my week, and perhaps yours, too, by hurling his size tens at George W. Bush.

For a valuable and treasured half-second, Mr Bush’s weird, secret smirk (what does he find so funny about everything?) faded from his silly face.

This inadequate, who launched a hundred thousand bombs, whose petulant whims and stinking lies started a stupid war that destroyed untold lives, and helped to make the West bankrupt, was forced to duck.

He ducked very well, almost as if he had been practising, or trained. If only the missiles he launched had been so easy to evade for the unharmful women and children who died in his Shock and Awe.

It is what happened next that is much more disturbing.

Huge men fell violently upon Mr al-Zeidi and hauled him from the room.

As they did so, you could hear the journalist’s genuine cries of pain and distress, long after he had been rendered helpless.

There was blood on the carpet after he had been dragged away.

And this is no milksop. Mr al-Zeidi has survived being kidnapped, reports bravely and lives in the centre of Baghdad.

He was then held incommunicado, and one of his brothers has claimed that this was because his injuries were so bad that the authorities dared not let him be seen in public.

Would this have happened to anyone who did something similar in London or Washington? If the new Iraq is so free and democratic, why is this happening?

We all know the truth. The claims of freedom are a fake and a lie, like everything else about this war.

What else is Barry the smoker hiding?

Now at last we have a picture of Barry Obama smoking.

It's something all the media know he does, and which is not good for his image, but which was mysteriously un-photographed for years.

But wait a second.

These pictures are decades old, and were rediscovered in time to be used during the election campaign.

But they were left in a vault till now because the person who took them was afraid they would damage the Supreme One.

Why do we accept this suppression and censorship?

What other things about him are being kept in vaults, in case they would damage him if we knew about them?

Sacking Jack - that was a real Today scandal

What a lot of fuss about Ed Stourton being dropped as a presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

My sympathies to Mr Stourton, whose opinion of the BBC may now be closer to mine than it used to be, but I can’t see any major significance in the substitution of one BBC standard-issue ‘impartial’ liberal for another.

The non-row brings to mind the genuine scandal, still not properly explored, of the removal of the anti-Common Market presenter Jack de Manio from Today.

A legendary BBC radio programme, called Document – A Letter To The Times, broadcast on February 3, 2000, records persuasively that the Corporation came under pressure from pro-Market lobbyists to sack Jack, and that he was soon after removed.

Coincidence? You may believe that if you wish. I don’t.

The Labour peer Roy Hattersley creditably recalls his personal disgust when he attended a high-level pro-Market breakfast meeting at which similar actions against anti-Market broadcasters were openly demanded by pro-Brussels conspirators.

I do hope the BBC repeats this amazing programme soon.

Shrouds that spell out our defeat

Now that we’re quitting Iraq, everyone is admitting that the guff about our occupation of Basra was just that, guff. We did no good, and in the end we pretty much handed over the city to indirect Iranian control.

Nobody can pretend that was what we meant to do.

When we eventually scuttle from Afghanistan, we will find out that all the ‘victory’ propaganda, and the drivel about ‘hearts and minds’ in Helmand, is just as false.

The only true thing is the steadily rising tally of deaths and the less-publicised butcher’s bill of the very badly injured.

What really makes me laugh is the pretence of having liberated the women of Afghanistan. On the contrary, Afghanistan remains almost as repressive on this score as Iran.

Non-Muslim British female reporters travelling with Gordon Brown to Kabul last week were strongly advised - by Downing Street officials - to shroud their heads in scarves or pashminas during a Press conference with President Karzai.

Opposition

David Cameron is quite right to oppose the Government’s plan to force single mothers to go out to work. Having made sure their children have only one parent, it seems pretty stupid to take her away too, and conscript her into wage-slavery.

What is he going to do about this colossal social disaster? The villain in this has always been the State, which has encouraged unmarried motherhood by subsidising it.

You can hardly blame the women who responded to these blandishments. They are, in effect, married to the State, and the State has no business changing its mind and deserting them.

But if we seriously want fewer fatherless families, there’s a simple solution. Stop encouraging this form of household. Existing benefits should remain untouched, but we should give nine months’ warning that they will cease for new applicants.

Mr Cameron, who hasn’t any convictions to have the courage of, wouldn’t dare. But somebody must.

Christmas, the birth of hope, has always been an inextinguishable light in the midst of deep darkness. At this specially dark time, it shines all the more brightly. A very happy and blessed Christmas to you all.

Comments

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I do sometimes wonder if Tim Lemon lives on one of the moons of Jupiter. He says that "Even the Church of England has given up preaching on the subject of single motherhood."
Even the Church of England? Even? Even!!?

Where does one begin?

I am well aware of Philip Larkin's poem, and of the significance of Lady Chatterley, the Beatles etc. A discussion of these and related matetrs forms the theme of my book 'The Abolition of Britain'. I am not quite sure what Mr Lemon intends to explain by quoting Larkin, though I am always glad to see good poetry quoted at any time.

Regrettable and embarrassing though Mr Lilley's attempt at song may have been, I still cannot see his speech, or anything else done or said by the Tories, as a 'war on single mothers', or, more to the point, on voluntary single motherhood, the actual issue. What action accompanied it?

How can Mr Lemon square this statement:"When Tony Blair or Michael Portillo say that it is a disadvantage to have only one parent they mean it in a caring and, of course, non-judgemental way",(29th December,1.16 pm) with this one:"I didn't intend to give the impression that Tony Blair had disapproved of single parenthood, or Portillo."(30th December, 5.16 pm)?

It seemed a little like a "war on single mothers" when Peter Lilley told the Tory party conference, many years ago: "I've got a little list... and no one will be missed." It was a list of single mothers who were supposedly cheating on their benefits.

It is wrong to focus on single mothers when the fathers and the whole of society is part of the problem. Even the Church of England has given up preaching on this subject.

I didn't intend to give the impression that Tony Blair had disapproved of single parenthood, or Portillo.

The view that Peter Hitchens would like an explanation of is best expressed by Philip Larkin's poems High Window and Annus Mirabilis.

Annus Mirabilis

Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(Which was rather late for me)-
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles' first LP.

Up till then there'd only been
A sort of bargaining,
A wrangle for a ring,
A shame that started at sixteen
And spread to everything.

Then at once the quarrel sank:
Everyone felt the same,
And every like became
A brilliant breaking of the bank,
A quite unlosable game.

So life was never better than
In nineteen sixty-three
(Though just too late for me)-
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles' first LP.

As an afterthought to Mr Hitchens' comments on the Bush-shoe incident, it would be interesting to hear Hitchens' thoughts on Iraq at the present time and on what kind of future he thinks might await it. I find the current silence rather ominous. Though perhaps the media aren't reporting on much that is going on there at the moment owing to the economic turmoil.

It's a great pity that one can't retrieve the dispatches Mr Hitchens wrote in the aftermath of the invasion (when were you there again?) and indeed his review of Patrick Cockburn's fine book on the subject. Perhaps this is because the MoS sadly never put it on its website, unlike Christopher Hitchens' somewhat uncharacteristically equivocal review in 'Slate'.

Tim Lemon needs to cite chapter and verse to justify his assertion that Anthony Blair has ever disapproved publicly of single parenthood. Those who do dare to do so know very well that they will face a tidal wave of calumny, ignorant abuse and personal slander.

As for Michael Portillo, I cannot recall him doing so even in the days when he was Margaret Thatcher's principal apostle, though Peter Lilley and John Redwood did. I well remember David Willetts, many years ago, being the first Tory front bencher to declare that the Useless Party's (non-existent) 'war against single mothers' was over, because I was there at the time and argued with him about it afterwards. I believe Michael Gove has since repeated this pledge.

Also, Mr Lemon seems to be suggesting there is something axiomatically outrageous or outlandish in believing that men and women should consider the conditions in which a child will be raised, before the act of procreation. Surely, the outlandish and outrageous view would be to fail to consider the child's future. The nurture of another human being, who will form an important part of the next generation, is the greatest responsibility most of us will ever handle. Mr Lemon appears to think it self-evidently wicked to take it seriously. I should be glad of an explanation of this view, though, knowing Mr Lemon of old, I am not too optimistic that I shall get one.

Well, I'm not sure what being 'out of touch' really means, Mr Lemon. It sounds to me like one of the modern phrases that symbolises the garbage dump that is Britain as it enters 2009. Indeed, your opposition to the principle of selection by ability in education probably means that you're rather 'in touch' with the clueless British political elite.

I haven't really any desire to rehearse the grammar school debate again since it's been argued before by others better than I could. Suffice to say that you find yourself in somewhat esteemed company, Timmy little chap. One of the worst politicians ever to possibly grace the British political scene shares your anti-grammar school stance: that national treasure, Royston Hattersley.

When Tony Blair or Michael Portillo say that it is a disadvantage to have only one parent they mean it in a caring and, of course, non-judgemental way; when Peter Hitchens says it, he implies that the parents should jolly well thought of that before they had sex.

I'm out of touch because I don't support grammar schools, Wesley Crosland?

Peter Hitchens:
"Simon Newman says that my position (that depriving a child of his one parent,by compelling her to go out to work, having ensured he has only one parent in the first place by subsidising lone parenthood, is wrong) is 'the standard left-liberal line'.

I am unaware of any left-liberal who has taken this position. Indeed, I am unaware of any left-liberal who regards it as a disadvantage to have only one parent. Generally, if I so much as dare to suggest this, I am slandered by left-liberals ( and by their gullible dupes) as a persecutor of single mothers.

Perhaps Mr Newman (or in his absence, anyone else) could give me an example of a left-liberal, standard or otherwise, who takes this view."

In the US, in the '90s the Clinton administration (with Republican support) time-limited welfare, forcing single mothers to go out to work after 5 years, as I recall. This greatly reduced child poverty and has also been credited with contributing to the fall in US crime rates.

A single mother working hard to support her children is not an ideal situation for the children. I have a friend in just this situation, it's no fun. But it's much better, and a better role model, than a non-working single mother and a household where nobody works.

Yes, Tim Lemon, Hitchens can't possibly know what it is like to live on a run-down council estate, can he, despite the fact that he once ventured alone to the Manor Estate to meet the yobs terrorising the law-abiding who aren't wealthy enough to be able to escape from there. No such problems would present themselves to the cretins who preside over this mess though. Their fat state salaries would always allow them to flee if their neighbourhoods started going down the pan. Damn them.

I believe Hitchens spoke to the law-abiding residents of the estate who cower in fear and who have to suffer torment because of their government's pathetically lax criminal justice policies. Ever find Blair going to such places alone, Lemon? Ha, fat chance.

Along with your anti-grammar school comments, I believe the evidence suggests that it is you who is out of touch, Mr Lemon.

You can't turn the clock back by taking away child benifit for new applicants. Most single parents never planned to end up that way, but many relationships end when the child is still very small. Peter Hitchens is out of touch and doesn't know what it is like to live on a run-down housing estate. He, also, has admitted to never having smoked, which explains why he doesn't understand the word addiction. You can't really be addicted to food and Hitchens drinks moderately. He's never experienced the craving for a cigarette you get when someone in the room lights up and you're trying to give up.

Tony Blair is a left-liberal who has said that it is a disadvantage to have only one parent. Peter Hitchens seems to think that left-liberals are completely out of touch with reality.

Bush has that smirk because he knows the truth, how everything is going just as he and his cohorts planned; a long and disastrous war making America unpopular and making the world more divided than it has ever been before, more little rogue nations to arm and fund and create as the “bad guys”. Mission accomplished, the Eagle has shat on lady liberty once more.

Just got back from Munich and I saw how a country should be run, people who know who they are with a shared history and national pride. The Xmas celebrations were amazing, they put our country to shame. It made me wonder who actually won the war....

A Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year to you Mr Hitchens, may 2009 bring us closer to the end of this nightmare we have been in.

The answers to Mr Hitchens’s first two questions are “Yes” and “Yes”. In Iraq these things are taken much more seriously than they are here, mainly because the people of Iraq value their new sovereignty (and therefore the dignity of states and their heads) far more than we do in this disempowered country. Contrary to what Mr Hitchens says, people used to have respect for politicians because in the old days they had authority. Now they have no authority, thanks to Brussels and the Pentagon, and people have no respect either for them or for anyone else.

But is there any evidence that this snotty little twerp of an Iraqi journalist was beaten up? If he was then one can only wish that journalists who showed such disrespect to heads of state (our own especially) in this country were treated as justly.

In any case it’s hard to have any great sympathy for Mr al-Zeidi. I suggest that the new Iraq is indeed “free and democratic”, and Mr Hitchens and Mr al-Zeidi don’t like it one little bit because they like the idea of “freedom and democracy” (I don’t know why) but they don’t want to admit that Bush was right. (Again, I don’t now why.)

Similarly though, is there any evidence that the picture of Barack Obama smoking was censored or suppressed? (Mr Hitchens calls him “Barry”, for no obvious reason other than that he clearly thinks it is funny. Does anyone else?) It’s very easy to tolerate suppression and censorship when they’re not actually happening. Paradoxically, of course, it’s much easier to wax lyrical about how terrible they are as well.

Is there any evidence, come to that, that President Bush is delusional, or a power maniac, or a “war-monger”? If the latter remark refers to his removal of Saddam Hussein (who genuinely was a war-monger) in 2003 then why is this somehow worse than supporting Saddam and leaving him in power (as Bush’s three immediate predecessors did)?

Again, if Bush “lied” then where is the evidence?

For my part I was considerably cheered last week at Bush’s neat ability to duck. (One wonders what might have become of the wooden, inarticulate Gordon Brown.) Of course, if he’d just caught the shoes and chucked them back then he’d have been the coolest President ever. But I suppose one just doesn’t think of these things are the time.

Was Jack de Manio really sacked by the BBC for being anti-Common Market, or this just coincidence and paranoia? Again, where’s the evidence?

The truth about our famous “exit” from Iraq, which Mr Hitchens seems unwilling to acknowledge, is that we’re leaving Basra and handing it over to the Americans because they’ve done a far better job with the rest of Iraq than we have with our patch – and this despite the fact that we were given the most peaceful and stable part of the entire country south of Kurdistan. People like Mr Hitchens have been demanding the withdrawal of British troops for five years now. Is it any wonder that Tony Blair and his equally ghastly successor have used this whining as cover to do just that?

So, does Mr Hitchens want the State to go on subsidising single mothers (along with the rest of the Underclass, which only exists in the first place because the Government pays for it)? David Cameron thinks everything can be fixed my “nudging” things here and there. Does Mr Hitchens agree with him, or does he agree that what’s wrong with this country is fundamental and systemic and that only radical action will move things back in the right direction? Single mothers will of course not be forced to go out and work. (Again, I know of no evidence that this is what’s going to happen.) Clearly though they will be strongly encouraged, once the Government’s free money-tap has been turned off, to find working husbands, and to re-forge some of the broken social attachments of family and church that they long ago disdainfully abandoned. (And even if they aren’t then their younger sisters and daughters certainly will be.)

Simon Newman says that my position (that depriving a child of his one parent,by compelling her to go out to work, having ensured he has only one parent in the first place by subsidising lone parenthood, is wrong) is 'the standard left-liberal line'.

I am unaware of any left-liberal who has taken this position. Indeed, I am unaware of any left-liberal who regards it as a disadvantage to have only one parent. Generally, if I so much as dare to suggest this, I am slandered by left-liberals ( and by their gullible dupes) as a persecutor of single mothers.

Perhaps Mr Newman (or in his absence, anyone else) could give me an example of a left-liberal, standard or otherwise, who takes this view.

President (George W. Bush) is seemingly most definitely perceived by US voters to be somewhat of a latter day variant of the Biblical bush, at least in the eyes of the members of an (as yet alleged) sect within the US Republican Party, often railed as ‘Warmongers Incorporated’.

I predict (alright! – I soothsay) the emergence of a tempest among Britons looking to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with US voters. A figurative urge to get singing from this increasingly popular hymn sheet rather than see it wasting away on this (g)aspiring new President. Who, after he has been formally sworn in will (the length of string permitting) necessarily want to begin some sort of evolutionary process. One somewhat analogous to converting a lead free petrol engine back to burning leaded petrol.

Of course Barry will look to base his continued support for those behind the movement, which has just swept him to victory, upon hard (empirical) evidence, rather than election euphoria driven conspiracy theories.

Arguers in favour of the belief such a sect of warmongers does in fact exist, must necessary promulgate their notions (albeit in a figuratively speaking context) so as to merely imply as opposed to categorically state rational predictions that if a ‘Warmongers Incorporated’ membership does exist. They must have somewhere to store the ‘tablets of stone’ upon which is written their so called Godly inspired barbaric creed of bartering the price of a soldier’s life. And whether or not for no better expected return than to protect ‘Warmongers Incorporated’ members from sustaining ‘brain-hurt’ in the course of playing the international stage with statesmanlike refinement, in the face of impossible odds.

Torments such as imposed by the endemically recalcitrant nature of General Trade and Tariff agreements. Spewed at them relentlessly from 1947 until 1993 when GATT jurisdiction transferred to WTO (world trade organisation).

And since the Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts transpired? ‘Boy-oh-boy’ does ‘Warmongers Incorporated’ believe ‘they have never had it so good’?

Those of intellectual and/or scriptural candour (‘Bush-speak’ aside) are bound to consider where (as there must be somewhere) this sect has in fact located its vaults containing the hard evidence of what righteous and/or humanistic mind-sets might well perceive as the actual commandment (or should I say ‘anti-commandments’) by which members of ‘Warmongers Incorporated’ live their accordingly barbarous lives.

I think I can safely presume without fear of valid contradiction that in respect of Uncle Sam’s mobilisations post Vietnam. The US has not had conscription to fall back on and now relies wholly upon volunteers.

Nevertheless, the pride of any nation’s military personnel is never abrogated should they respond with a due sense of patriotism and professionalism, to being called to serve in his/her nation’s military forces, whether as a conscript or volunteer.

In either case the sense of pride and patriotism is no lesser for the conscript than for the volunteer. And this (I contend) prevails irrespective of whether either conscript or volunteer subsequently serve in real war theatres or not, as they both have every right to believe they can survive such conflict without being permanently maimed or killed.

And the proof of this pudding lies in a governments record of military governance and is most accurately established by listening to military personnel of all ranks as they comment on the requisite quality and abundance of their arms and ordinance and safety ware as well as the efficiency of the logistical apparatus which supports the and not least is this also true in respect of their on-going training and professional development.

What is abhorrent is the perpetual misuse of the US military apparatus (and the increasing reliance on UK military resources) by ‘Warmongers Incorporated’.

If ‘Barry’ is up to the job of representing the will of the American People (this includes military personnel) who have so overwhelmingly swept him to office. He should stand ready to compliment their trust in him and halt both the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns well before next Christmas, and in the interim and beyond. He must engage in the formulation of a more resourceful (not least too say multi-nationally inclusive) approach to combating terrorist threats to both the US and to her/his allies.

The smirk on Mr Bush's face as he attempted to dodge the second shoe was the most engaged he has ever looked when delivering a speech. I wonder if he would have become president if he had come from some trailer park in Arkansas? The American dream is a worse joke than the British class system.

"Having made sure their children have only one parent, it seems pretty stupid to take her away too, and conscript her into wage-slavery..."

That's the standard left-liberal line. How about 5 years' notice to get a job or a husband? Would that be too harsh?

The reality is that children in households with no experience of work are much worse off in the long term than those with 'wage slave' parents. And having a single-mother working parent, heavily subsidised of course, is not significantly different from the normal modern situation of having two parents, both of whom have to work.

Many of our social and national problems, it seems to me, are caused by our acceptance of the notion that those who make decisions affecting our lives - and the lives of others - are not made to live "at the sharp end" and to experience daily and personally the results of their decisions.
I don't recall, for example, seeing either President Bush or Mr Blair personally leading their soldiers into Iraq or Afghanistan. Perhaps they wouldn't have been any good at it anyway but it would at least have been a fine gesture which would have enhanced them.
If cabinet ministers were stripped of the special protections and social privileges, which have accompanied their high office from more stable times and were made to live in the world inhabited by ordinary folk, we would have better and more realistic and effective laws in a very short time indeed.
Our democratic rulers have for decades now been undermining the idea of social distinction, getting rid of grammar schools and filling the House of Lords with ennobled commoners. Why should the Cabinet be spared the fate of the rest and cling to its age-old privileges?
If the Home Secretary of the day, for instance, (I refer to the office itself and not to its present incumbent) were obliged as part of his or her job description to live without special police or other protection in one of the livelier parts of the city, I think that the cabinet would be obliged more urgently than may currently be the case to face and seek to correct certain unpalatable realities about its policies and their effectiveness.
Would it be quite impossible to have more of a "do as I do" and less of a "do as I say" system?

Say what you will about Bush,but he faces a lot of hate on a daily basis. There are even songs about it (Avril Lavigne,"Dear Mr President") and a film that deals with his assassination:
[edited by admin: links to other sites not allowed]
I am not so sure if this advances civilization.Reports differ on whether this Iraqi journalist was really tortured.However,it would have been even more courageous of him to throw his shoe at the President of an Arab country.

Peter Hitchens is, although I don't always agree with him, one of the most incisive minds in British journalism. Oh and please remind me why we are in Afghanistan-------weapons of mass destruction? or to enhance the blair faced liar's income from his so-called speaking tours? THERE ARE MANY FORMS OF BRIBERY.

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